The World of Scott Mindeaux

TIME Names iPhone Invention Of The Year!

Today, Time Magazine named Apple’s iPhone the Invention of the Year for 2007.

I agree!

Is Jerry Seinfeld No Longer a Mac User?

I was watching TV the other day and noticed a commercial and I heard a voice.  The voice was Jerry Seinfeld’s.  The commercial was for an HP Laptop.  For years I have always thought Jerry was a Mac fan.

Has he left the masses of “different thinkers” and moved to the Window’s platform?? For years on his TV show he has had several models of Macs in his living room over the years.
Say it isn’t so!

Why I have a Stylist …

So my hair has gotten unbearably long over the last two weeks. I’m two weeks overdue for my haircut and the hair is touching my ears and that annoys me to no end. Plus the hair has gotton so long that I can’t sleep at night since I get hot. So why don’t I just get it cut you ask? Well…

The story goes that I’m kinda picky about who cuts my hair. I know I’m no model and not the greatest lookin guy on the block, but I have a particular look that I like to maintain. When I was in DC, I had a stylist for over 3 years, her name was Fadwa. She was from one of the former republics of the Soviet Union. She listened to exactly what I wanted and she did it. She didn’t RUSH me thru to get to the next waiting person in the lobby. She took her time and she talked to me about real things. We would talk about politics, we would talk about food, new restaurants in the area and her family. Prior to that I had another stylist that I had been seeing for aobut 2 years.

When I moved to back to California, I had the hardest time finding someone that I could trust to keep my hair consistent from haircut to haircut. I have always gone to salons as opposed to Fantastic Sams or HairMasters or SuperCuts. I always felt that salons gave you the time of day and you were the “next” person in line. Well about 1.5 years ago I found Delila. She’s actually the hair stylist of my brother-in-law’s mom. From that point on, I have been seeing Delila. Well about 7 months ago, she left her salon and went to another salon that was closer to her home in Brea. So what did this mean for me? Well I decided that it was worth the trip to Brea once a month to get my hair cut. Brea is about 27 miles from my house. So for the last 7 months I have made the trek. Well this month I had to cancel and move my appointment. This was the week my hair was getting unmanageable. So I rebook my appointment for yesterday. Well I got a call at 8:15am from the salon and was told that Dalila had to cancel all her appointments.

Frack.

So after a shower yesterday and spending 35 minutes in the bathroom trying to make my hair not look like an SOS sponge on Saturday I told myself I had to break down and get it cut by some random person. That didn’t happen. I said, I could wait until next Satruday to get it cut.

So this morning I got up and a friend of mine at Cornell (Ithaca, NY) IM’d me and wanted to do video chat with me with the new Leopard iChat. I said, NOOOO my hair is all fucked up and I just woke up. He said pshaw and we did the video thing. OMG, the hair was out of control. I was so embarassed. This embarassment led me to taking a shower and getting ready for the day. This resulted in a 25 minute stance in front of the vanity trying ot fix my hair. That’s it. I’m over it.

I left the house and headed out. I decided I would go to the place that was next to the Starbucks so I could also use the opportunity to get the iPass thing working. Well it turns out that the place was full of people and I went in search of another place. I drove into Tustin and found a place near Doug’s place. It was a HairMasters and the person who as cutting my hair didn’t speak English very well. I’m always afraid they can;t understand me and I end up with a bad haircut. Well tonite was different. She did a great job and cut it enough that it wasn’t short and no longer long. So in about 2 weeks I can have Delila fix what she started!

P.S. 9:45pm – I just looked in the mirror upon closer inspection…she butchered my head… ugh!

Still No Word From The Hyatt

I haven’t heard a peep from anyone at Hyatt about my stay in Arlington, VA in September. I sent an email again to one of the managers in customer service.

Ms. Lazar,

It was been over a month since I wrote to Hyatt about my stay at the Arlington Hyatt in Virginia (Room 420) on 9/14&15. I have not heard from anyone. I even sent photos to you to examine and still no response. I have posted the pictures on the internet along with an account of my stay at the Hyatt. I have also taken the steps to make mention in TripAdvisor. If you would like to look at the photos again, you can do so at http://www.scottmindeaux.com/wordpress/?p=682

I’m saddened by Hyatt’s inability to respond to customer service and address such issues as cleanliness. While I don’t stay at Hyatt very often, however I still expect the same level of quality as any of your other 3 and 4 star competitors. The room I stayed in looked like it was not occupied for some time and the lingering smell of smoke leads me to believe the room was not non-smoking at some point during its recent life. The part the disturbs me more is the lack of attention this bathroom was in. These are not overnight stains. These are stains and mold over a long period of time that has gone unchecked or more so to the point, ignored by a housecleaning staff of a high-end hotel property. There was also a lack of concern at the front desk when I checked-out and told the manager – passed along as if it was an anomaly to the excellent customer service that one expects.

5 weeks is a bit long for a response to my stay in your Arlington, VA location.

scott
www.scottmindeaux.com

Do you think this will get me anywhere??

I’ve Been Leopardized

So on Friday night, Doug and I stood in line at the Apple Store at the Irvine Spectrum and picked up my copy of Leopard, Mac OS X 10.5. After standing in line with about 250 people, the doors opened at the Irvine Store and the celebrations began. The Apple Store Staff was gathered around the front door and clapping in unison and throwing hurrahs at the crowd. T-Shirts we given away to those buying a copy of Leopard. We got in the store, handed our shirts, then put ina line to purchase our copy of Apple’s latest OS offering. We got to the register and paid for our copy and made our way to the door.

It was so anti-climatic. What a bummer.

Following the afterpurchase rush, we headed out to dinner and got something to eat. Afterthat we rushed home so we could start the upgrade. I had read that some upgrades were taking upwards of 2 hours.

I wanted to backup my MacBook Pro first before doing anything to it. I pulled out my copy of Carbon Copy Clone and started the backup. The backup took almost 4 hours! Once the backup was complete, it had to go thru a verify process which took another hour. Ugh.

Once that was done, it was time to upgrade. I was so excited! I inserted the DVD from its packaging featuring a large black X with a holographic effect behind it. The system rebooted and the upgrade began. The upgrade from reboot to reboot took a little over an hour. The computer rebooted after the upgrade and there it was!

I was greated by their new default space background and an animated welcome message. I started clicking here and clicking there. So what do I notice in this upgrade?

First glance is the translucent menu bar. I don’t know how I feel about it. I guess it’s ok. Next comes the slighty rounded corners of the menus themselves.

Each window casts a shadow underneath it that is way more pronounced that before. It’s very noticeable on a white background.

The Dock: striking when it is on the bottom of your screen, but quite boring when you have the dock positioned on the right or left.

All my network share icons have turned into Question Marks. So I logged into the corporate network and re-connected to the shares and the icons changed to a new icon, no more boring grey globe. they icon looks like a blue external hard drive. However, when I actually connect to the share, it turns into a folder.

Logging into the network I noticed that when the dialog box for authenticating to the share comes up, there is no domain field anymore. I had to type the domain name slash my user name for me to make the connection.

Another odd thing is that the share mounts aren’t mounting on the Desktop. They show up in the sidebar, but not on the desktop – have to look into that.

Next I tried the whole “fan” or stacks thing in the dock. You actually have two views, fan or grid. Although it’s kewl to look at, I don’t know if it will be quite useful. You can sort my name or date created or modified. I like the grid look.

Oh..almost forgot, when I tried to run our corporate VPN software I got an error. Turns out I had to upgrade the software as the version I had was not compatible with Leopard. Luckily someone had posted the newest update of the Cisco VPN Client online.

Next was Parallels. Now I haven’t upgraded to version 3.0 of the software, I’m still using 2.5 Build 3214. Good thing too, cuz that the only build that will work with Leopard or upgarde to version 3.0

So what was next? iChat and video. This was a disappointment, but I think its a lighting issue. They have those new backgrounds that you can do now. turns out it works on a static background, not just a plain background. The catch here is STATIC. If you have any change in the background picture, it was distort. Lighting also plays a large factor in the success of this “nicety” not “necessity”.

I also tested the screen sharing option with a friend and that seemed to work nicely. I could send my screen or request to see his screen. Here’s the downfall, it let’s you control the mouse and keyboard of the person you are watching. We couldn’t find a setting or menu button that dis-allowed you to share control of your system. This seems odd to me.

So that’s it for now, I’ll do more testing in the next few days and once I’m at the office tomorrow I can see how things interact on the network.

So was the upgrade worth it? I’m not sure yet. As of this post, on a scale of 1 to 10, I’ll say 6.5.

More to come later…

Alice Medrich’s Pure Dessert

Alice Medrich is the Queen of Chocolate! Without a doubt, she has gotten the title cuz she deserves it! I met Alice Medrich in 2004 where she taught a Chocalate class for me at my cooking school when I worked at Sur La Table. In 2004 she released “Bittersweet: Recipes and Tales from a Life in Chocolate“.

Alice Medrich was the founder of the dessert shop, Chocolat, in Berkeley. She also released her cookbook, “Chocolat“.

I’m going to find the photos I took during her class. Alice has released her new book this year entitled, “Pure Dessert“. I think I need to pick up a copy and bake a few things from this book.

If it is anything like her book Bittersweet, it will be hard to keep the pages clean from all the chocolate being slung across the kitchen!